Can you measure creativity? Can you compare it across countries and regions or across different fields of human activity? If yes, in what way? An international conference organised by the European Commission and its Centre for Research on Lifelong Learning (CRELL) will address these questions in Brussels on 28 and 29 May 2009. Researchers, country officials, representatives from international organisations and education practitioners will come together to discuss the feasibility of both measuring creativity and — in the longer term — of conducting a large-scale survey on individual creativity.

Within the context of the European Year of Creativity and Innovation 2009, the European Commission has launched an initiative to explore the feasibility of measuring creativity at national, regional and individual levels. To this end, an international conference will explore the adequacy of using a limited number of indicators derived from existing statistical sources to address creativity at an aggregate level and to identify and discuss the necessary steps to conduct a large scale survey to measure individual creative skills of young people.

The European Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Youth, Ján Figel', said: " The EU's creativity and innovative capacity are vital for our economic prosperity and social cohesion. While it is a real challenge to measure a concept like creativity in figures, it is nonetheless crucial that we learn more about creativity in order to be able to nurture and support it in the best possible way."

On Thursday, 28 May, conference participants will look at current initiatives on indicators in the fields of innovation, science and technology, research and development, entrepreneurship, regional development, culture and design and relate them to the measurement of creativity. On Friday, 29 May, high level experts in the area of creativity will introduce existing tools for the measurement of individuals' creativity and will discuss how they could be implemented on an international scale.

2009 – the European Year of Creativity and Innovation

2009 is the European Year of Creativity and Innovation. Its main objective is to promote awareness of the importance of creativity and innovation for personal, social and economic development, to disseminate good practises, to stimulate education and research and to promote policy debate on relevant issues.